An interesting exegesis from Dom Prosper Gueranger on the vital role of penance and mortification in the development of virtue and growth in sanctity. Penance and mortification have tended to get short shrift among Catholics in the past century or so, with today’s minimal penitential requirements being a faint shadow of those regularly practiced by our forefathers in the Faith. The direction given below may seem harsh, and we should not go off into penitential extremes without the approval of a good confessor, but at the same time, I think there is a bit too much resistance toward these kinds of penitential acts which at one time were quite routine. I think priests should perhaps be a bit more open-minded when it comes to permitting souls to engage in penances they feel called towards.

Penance and mortification differ in this; that penance is a debt of justice, incumbent on the sinner; mortification is a duty commanded by prudence; which duty becomes that of every Christian who is not foolish enough to pretend to be out of the reach of concupiscence. Is there anyone living who could honestly say that he has fully acquitted himself of these two duties, that he has satisfied the claims of God’s justice, and that he has stifled every germ of his evil passions?All spiritual masters, without exception, teach that no man who is desirous either of perfection or of salvation should limit himself to the rules of simple temperance, that cardinal virtue which forbids excess in pleasures of every kind. This, they tell us, is not enough; and that the Christian, taking up another virtue, namely fortitude, must from time to time refuse himself even lawful gratifications; must impose privations on himself which are not otherwise of obligation; must even inflict punishment on himself in the manner and measure permitted him by a discreet director.

Amidst the thousands of holy writers who treat of this point of asceticism, let us listen to the amiable and gentle St.Francis de Sales. ‘If’,’ says he, in his Introduction to a Devout Life – ‘if you can bear fasting you would do well to fast on certain days, beyond those fasts which the Church commands us to observe….’even when one does not fast much, yet does the enemy fear us all the more when he sees that we know how to impose a fast on ourselves. Wednesday, Fridays, and Saturdays were the days whereon the Christians of former times most practiced abstinence. Therefore, do you choose out of these for your fasts, as far as your devotion and the discretion of your director will counsel you to do…..The discipline, when taken, with moderation, possesses a marvelous power for awakening the desire for devotion. The hair-shirt is efficacious in reducing the body to subjection…….on days which are especially devoted to penance, one may wear it, the advice of a discreet confessor having been previously taken.” Thus speaks the learned Doctor of the Church, the saintly Bishop of Geneva, whose sweet prudence is almost proverbial; and there to whom he address these instructions are persons living in the world. In the world, quite as much as in the cloister, the Christian life, if seriously taken up, imperatively requires this incessant war of the spirit against the flesh. Let that war cease, and the flesh speedily usurps the sway, and reduces the soul to the state of torpor, be either seizing her very first attempts at virtue and chilling them into apathy, or by plunging her, at a single throw, deep in the the filth of sin. [Thus we can see how laxity in penance, even encouraged for various well-meant but perhaps utlimately unhelpful reasons by those in Church authority, has played a leading role in participating the crisis in the Faith, reducing souls to torpor and weak against the wiles of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Practice as much penance as you can, and pray for me, for I am weak! I will pray for you! And yes my wife+baby are doing fine, so far, thank you!]

Neither is it to be feared that affability in the Christian’s social intercourse will be in any way impaired by this energy of self-mortification. That virtue which is based on such forgetfulness of oneself, as to make him love discomfort and suffering for God’s sake, does not render such a man one whit less pleasing in company, or rob the friendly circle he frequents of one single charm……….The Day of Judgment will give a strange lesson to those many good-for-nothing and cowardly Christians who feel sure that everyone of their acquaintance is as fond of easy going softness as they themselves are!

————-End Quote————-

Well, perhaps Dom Gueranger could make that claim 150 years ago, not so sure about today. But we might have a surprise here or there.

The Vatican has given its backing to a central Rome square being named after Martin Luther, a church reformer excommunicated by the pope nearly 500 years ago……..

……..Luther was excommunicated in 1521 and was never allowed to return to the Catholic Church, but now the Vatican’s views have changed. [As much as I’d like to, I really don’t think I can rebut this statement]

Next month a hilltop square in Rome is due to be named Piazza Martin Lutero, in memory of Luther’s achievements. The site chosen is the Oppian Hill, a park area that overlooks the Colosseum.

The move has been six years in a making, following a request made by the Seventh-day Adventists, a Protestant denomination, Italian daily La Repubblica said. The original plan was to inaugurate the square in time for the 500th anniversary of Luther’s historic trip to Rome in 2010. City officials were not able to discuss the process behind naming the square or the reason for the holdup.

Despite Luther being thrown out of the Catholic Church during his lifetime, the Vatican reacted positively to news of the square’s upcoming inauguration. “It’s a decision taken by Rome city hall which is favorable to Catholics in that it’s in line with the path of dialogue started with the ecumenical council,” said the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, deputy director of the Vatican press office, referring to a gathering of churchmen to rule on faith matters.

The move contrasts sharply from views held by Luther around the time of his visit to Rome, when it was said he repeated the saying, “If there is a hell, Rome is built over it.”…… [also: “Rome is a satanic city,” “Rome is the seat of the antichrist,” and “The Pope is the devil’s servant.”]

…….within Italy there are very few Protestants; just 435,000 Italian citizens identify as Protestant, according to research published in 2012 by the Center for Studies on New Religions. Catholicism continues to be the dominant religion, with 97.9 percent of Italy’s 60 million residents having been baptized Catholic as of 2009.

Which makes one wonder if this was really an innocent decision made by Roman city authorities, of if there might even have been Vatican pressure applied to induce them to rule favorably. Given that the officials sat on the request for 6 years, and then, a couple of years into Francis’ reign, there is suddenly a change, I have to wonder if there is not a connection.

But with only a handful of Italian protestants, it seems incredible than a major Roman piazza would be renamed in Luther’s honor. What an affront to the millions of Catholics killed at protestant hands, and the great sufferings of so many Saints to win souls back to the Faith!

A priest in the Diocese of Peoria, Ill has drawn ire for a supposedly “anti-gay” letter he sent to all people residing in the zip code that most corresponds with his parish boundaries. Fr. Timothy Sauppe’, in great charity, advised all souls – even those that are not Catholic, but being the pastor over which he has spiritual responsibility nonetheless – of the great evil of pseudo-sodo-marriage and the Catholic duty to resist this false, government-imposed redefinition of marriage.

I’m sorry, but how is any of this “anti-gay?” Apparently, anything that disagrees with even the most outrageous, radical notion of the perverse community is now “anti-gay.” All the good priests says – and he is a rare priest for having true pastoral concern not merely for the active members of his parish but for all those who live within the parish boundaries, Catholic or not – is that the Church does not condone pseudo-sodo-marriage and neither does he, and that we have a right to oppose this imposition. He also says something completely unremarkable, that children have a right to both a natural mother and father, and should not be used as pawns in revolutionary social causes and experiments. He invites all to the saving Grace of Jesus Christ…….I’d call this a wonderfully charitable, concerned, and truly pastoral letter.

But the denizens of Westville, Ill, and even many self-described Catholics, apparently feel quite differently about the matter:

Father Timothy Sauppé sent the letter to residents with a 61883 zip code on Aug. 11 “in order to evangelize and protect St. Mary’s Catholic Church from future attack,” according to the church’s website. Sauppé was not available to comment when Commercial-News reached out to him Thursday.

The same flyer also names seven local organizations as sponsors and lists upcoming community events, including a Community Tent Revival “led by a Black Robed Regiment member” and upcoming Labor Day events in Westville.

Westville Lions Club President and village trustee member Darren VanDuyn wants to ensure the community that the message does not represent Westville, the businesses and organizations listed on the flyer, or the upcoming Labor Day Celebration sponsored by the Lions Club.

“I was furious because we are a diverse group of people and I didn’t want to be tied to this belief that we don’t all share this opinion of,” VanDuyn said. [OK, Mr. Van Duyn, you advertise in the parish bulletin for years, but why is that?]

VanDuyn said he was mostly concerned that the flyer would hurt the Lions Club Labor Day Celebration – the organization’s biggest fundraiser of the year. [Oh, I see. Money. Got it. Money more important than salvation]

“The flyer lists the Labor Day event and as you can see from Facebook posts from people, it’s very damaging,” VanDuyn said. “We wouldn’t be able to help the community and do what we do if we don’t make money from that event and I would hate for this [flyer] to ruin it.” [All that “good” you are doing is utterly undone by tolerating this great perversion in your midst, and actively opposing the priest who is trying to save souls. Like so many organizations like this, they lose sight of the real purpose of whatever good they think they are trying to achieve, and it becomes all about the money – more than last year, always more! I must say even certain Catholic fraternal organizations tend to fall into this common trap. How about subordinating your perceived temporal good for the supernatural good of souls, something of infinitely greater value?]

………Sauppé has recently published an article onCatholic-church.org entitled “The Merging Swarm: Identifying and Preparing for the Homosexual Agenda,” where he refers to the President as “Barack Hussein Obama” [um, that’s his full name, much like many called the previous president George W. Bush, but the media hate the obvious muslim connotation to that name and don’t want it broadcast] and refers to anyone who supports gay marriage as a “homosexualist.” The article is linked to St. Mary’s website. [I thank God for a true shepherd such as this.]

“I know a lot of good people from St. Mary’s and Sauppé’s opinions just don’t represent the church as a whole,” VanDuyn said. “This is the action of one individual. Throw the flyer away and be done with it.” [So what? So he hasn’t gotten through to a number of people, that’s too bad for them, because he speaks the Truth Christ has revealed through His Church. There have always been Judases and heretics, that is our fallen nature.]

VanDuyn encourages the community to attend the Labor Day events that are sponsored by the Lions Club. Margaritaville, an annual event in Westville held on Labor Day weekend, is a separate event sponsored by St. Mary’s.

“I just hope that this doesn’t affect our attendance. We have a lot of great things planned for that weekend. [Man this guy is just really hung up on the $$$]

Sauppé told the Commercial-News on Tuesday he felt he needed to inform the public the Supreme Court ruling gave churches the right to continue to advocate against same-sex marriage.

“This was a dual-purpose letter with community events on one side and a public notice on the other,” Sauppé said “As pastor, I’m not only over Catholics, but I’m over everyone within my parish boundaries and a lot of those people don’t know about the other side to this issue. [All true. But the for the millions who have bought into the mass psycho-sexual rationalization surrounding sodomy, fornication, pornography, divorce, abortion, etc., the mere reminder of the Truth is incredibly painful and must be stamped out of existence at all costs]

“So I was doing a public service to them by explaining that we have a constitutional right not to condone [same-sex marriage].”……

……Sauppé said he didn’t think the message was political.

“I’m trying to reach the people who aren’t Catholic who oppose this for religious or philosophical reasons because same-sex marriage goes against the natural law,” Sauppé said. “If they oppose me and St. Mary’s for speaking out in the public square, that would make them a religious bigot.” [Good turnaround. If they’re going to call us bigots for being faithful Catholics, we can call out their anti-Christian bigotry]

This priest is under heavy fire for his sending out this letter. Perhaps tying organizations to the letter without their explicit approval was imprudent, but we can also see how so many mainstream organizations like the Lion’s Club and many others have contributed to the collapse of Western culture through their single-minded pursuit of their own interest rather than standing for the true greater good.

Judging from the parish website and some articles he has written (here and especially here) this is a far-above average orthodox Novus Ordo priest. God bless him. We need so many more like him. I pray he find his way to offering the Traditional Latin Mass, but other than that, he seems an exceptional pastor willing to speak the truth in season and out, and to suffer the repercussions that may come. He has received some very nasty comments for having to close the parish school due to lack of attendance and for being, um……Catholic, but that’s the state of the Church today, where so many have fooled themselves into believing that being Catholic is just one of many lifestyle choices one can choose to self-apply, but which carries no onus regarding behavior or belief, and damn you if you try to tell them they’re not! Pastors like this are red meat for katholycs who believe what the TV/media tells them to believe and who don’t want their enormous rationalizations challenged. He deserves support.

You can write to him here if you want to send a brief message of support. I sent him one.

I’m sure most readers are aware that the radical pro-perversion organization New Ways Ministry – condemned repeatedly by the Vatican and CDF under John Paul II and Pope Benedict, including the forced laicization of one of its founders and numerous interventions against another – has long been a beacon of heresy and support for immorality under the guise of a false charity. Given that, it is damning with faint praise when they issue a giddy report on Archbishop Blaise Cupich’s recent homily endorsing the progressive faction at the upcoming Synod. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by that, Cupich has revealed himself to be a thoroughly progressive man and one frequently at odds with the constant belief and practice of the Faith.

What I find particularly egregious and disturbing in this most recent episode is the abuse of Scripture these characters always deploy to make their erroneous points (I am not linking to a bad site, you can find it if you want):

Preaching on Ephesians 5, a troubling text [Why is that “troubing?” It wasn’t troubling for the first 1900+ years of Christianity, why is it suddenly troubling now? What they really mean is, this is a text we find inconvenient and thus reject.] given its exhortation that “wives be submissive to your husbands,” Cupich said the text is actually quite subversive because it exhorts that husbands to be subordinate to their wives as well. This mutual submission between spouses is a teaching the early Church “would have found quite astonishing, if not revolutionary.”[Based on what evidence, other than the self-serving opinion of a dedicated revolutionary?] The archbishop explained:

“Christ was doing something utterly new in the human family, changing how people understand their relationships with each other as family. With the upcoming synod, it is clear that the Holy Father is calling the Church to examine our categories of expression about what we believe and be open to new avenues and creativity when it comes to accompanying families. All of this has much to say to us in Chicago, that we not settle for solutions that no longer work, expressions that no longer inspire and ways of working that stifle creativity and collaboration.”

Mind what he’s saying: traditional family arrangements of husband, wife, and children “no longer work” and “no longer inspire” but “stifle creativity and collaboration.” The Church can’t possibly call people to adhere to the family as always understood because, having not taught people to live according to this constant belief for decades, most bishops are now collectively throwing up their hands and declaring it an impossible standard to meet.

But notice the rhetorical sleight of hand: even if we take at face value all of Cupich’s claims, he works in a subtle reverse of logic upon which his entire point depends. OK, let’s say Christ was doing something “utterly new with the human family, etc.” in the early Church, that “new paradigm” became the accepted standard for all Christendom (treating women with more respect, making husband-wife relations more equal, whatever) and was the bedrock of Catholic moral teaching for 1900+ years. But note, this is because it was the implementation of something that was divinely revealed! What he is proposing now is the opposite, to allow the culture to dictate to the Church what is an acceptable arrangement for the family, and for the Church to bend to this new, incredibly compromised standard. It is the exact opposite of what happened in the early Church, where revelation worked a revolution on society (again, granting him his point) – what he proposes is to have society work a revolution on revelation! Do you see how he is twisting his rhetoric there most cleverly, if diabolically?

Also note, this was not just any homily, this was a significant salvo being fired in service of the progressive faction that seeks to destroy the entire moral edifice of the Faith:

Cupich was preaching in Holy Name Cathedral the at Mass for Investment of the Pallium. where Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Viganó presented the Chicago archbishop with the pallium, a small woolen stole worn metropolitan archbishops to signify their unity with the papacy. This pallium Mass was the first in a new model of investiture instituted by Pope Francis whereby archbishops receive the vestment in their local archdiocese rather than in Rome, reported Michael O’Loughlin of Crux. This is part of Pope Francis’ attempts to decentralize church power and affirm local communities’ participation. [Only overturning centuries of tradition in the process, but to make a modernist omelette, some eggs will be broken]

Much of the homily centered around the papacy however, presenting messages of Pope Francis by citing both Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si. In my view, what Cupich was really doing was calling the archdiocese to be a truly catholic church that is “home for all” where all are welcome.[This is a radically new interpretation of “Catholic,” which never in the history of the Church meant “every living soul,” but those who submit to the Doctrine of the Faith.] Citing Pope John XXIII, the archbishop told those at Mass:

“He called the entire Church to a fresh appreciation of the ancient teaching of the medicine of mercy in an era when many in the Church preferred the narrow path of severity and condemnation.[B as in B, S as in S. Even in the late 50s standards of doctrinal integrity had severely eroded. The “severe condemnatory” Catholic priest was always infinitely more a figment of progressive fever dreams than reality] .It is the pope’s ministry that draws us out of a narrow provincial view that reduces our experience of Church to just what is happening in my parish, my diocese, my country.[A hilarious claim regarding this most provincial of pontiffs] . . .[The pope in his travels] introduces us to our brothers and sisters in places we never visited, reminding us of what it means to be Catholic, a Church whose universality must be reflected in every particular Church.” [This is a most revolutionary sermon. It’s not a homily, it’s a sermon, departing far from merely explicating on the Scripture readings. This is a declaration of a progressive-modernist viewpoint. Note what he is saying, that JPII’s and Benedict’s massive and novel travels did not “introduce us” to others, it was only when the great progressive paragon came on the scene that the Church came to be enlightened. EVEN MORE SIGNIFICANTLY, he appears to be setting up a dichotomy between “particular Churches” and the Church, whether that means sects or local dioceses or both, I’m uncertain.]

Cupich’s words are worth noting not only for the message given to the congregation gathered, including twenty bishops, but for their broader significance given this church leader’s rising significance. He was Pope Francis’ first major episcopal appointment in the United States, coming with a largely positive record on LGBT issues that was further confirmed when he said last yearon CBS’ “Face the Nation” program that all families deserve legal protection

Yet, Cupich’s remarks are forward looking because he is expected to be appointed a special delegate to the Synod and his weight as a voice in the American Church will only grow…….

…..As for the October synod, Pope Francis is hoping for a miracle, and his appointments are raising the stakes that something positive for LGBT families might just happen.[Only at the cost of a vast number of souls, all true families, and the moral doctrine of the Church. To a progressive, that’s nothing for another great advance in the great liberation of mankind from God] Judging from Cupich’s words, he is open to the Spirit’s guidance and to new ways of accompanying families.[Once again, progressives pit the Holy Ghost against Himself, positively contradicting what He has revealed through Sacred Scripture. What a farce.] He commented on the Risen Christ “always doing something new” before quoting Evangelii Gaudium:

“Jesus can always break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him, and he constantly amazes us with his divine creativity.[So Cupich, too, sees no problem with Christ contradicting Himself, of even Sacred Dogmas having to change in the service of “mercy” and “creativity,” which are nothing but euphemisms for revolutionary doctrinal change. Thus, he is a MODERNIST, one who believes there are no constant Truths but only the most ephemeral, temporary, personal ones] . .[to the point that] new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs, and words with new meaning for today’s world.”

Two words sum this guy up: different religion.

If Archbishop Cupich, whose depraved radicalism becomes more apparent every day, is indeed appointed to the Ordinary Synod by direct intervention of Pope Francis, it will be a very telling moment, will it not. It would reveal even more clearly where this pope’s sympathies lie, and the course he desires the Sin-nod to take. Of course, such has already been made quite plain by the appointment of such soulless characters as Daneels and Bonny. In truth, the real miracle will be if the perennial Doctrine of the Faith is not completely shredded at this Synod.

I don’t think it any exaggeration to state that this Synod and the encyclical which will follow represent the greatest threat to the doctrinal integrity of the Church since Vatican II. We must conclude that after the accumulated evidence of 50 years of ruin directly attributable to the implementation of the “spirit of the Council” that the men driving this new push towards revolution simply want to see the Church destroyed or at least turned into a completely ineffectual NGO. Please pray and do penance in the weeks leading up to the Synod most fervently. Pray especially for true shepherds among priests and bishops to emerge not only to oppose this nightmare but also to properly catechize souls in the real Doctrine of the Faith.